Fish cannon to be ready in time for spawning

Pneumatic Whooshh Passage Portal designed to propel salmon through tubes past rock slide

The fish cannon being installed at the site of the Big Bar landslide is expected to be operational this week — in time to assist endangered chinook stocks as they move from the Fraser River to their natal spawning streams.

The pneumatic Whooshh Passage Portal will propel salmon through tubes past the five-metre waterfall that formed after hundreds of massive boulders fell from the canyon walls late in 2018.

A concrete fish ladder that allows salmon to reach a holding pond below the fish cannon was completed about a month ago. Fisheries officials and local First Nations currently collect fish from the holding pond and transport them upstream by truck.

Chinook start to enter the Fraser as early as February, but most of the spawning will occur in August, upstream from Big Bar.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada also unveiled changes to its fisheries management plan on Friday, including an expansion of the area closed to recreational Chinook fisheries near the mouth of the Fraser, said MP Terry Beech, parliamentary secretary for fisheries.

“We had to make some difficult decisions in the past for the sake of conservation and those have been made more difficult by the landslide at Big Bar,” said Beech.

About 89 per cent of early Chinook spawners were lost last year, along with 99 per cent of the Early Stuart sockeye. Thirteen of 14 Fraser River chinook stocks are considered at risk, according to Fisheries and Oceans.

After consulting with the Sports Fishing Advisory Board, two areas will be open to pilot recreational fisheries for hatchery fish, one near Victoria and the other off the Sunshine Coast.

“These are areas that are off the major migration routes, so the chances of running into a Fraser chinook salmon are very low,” said Beech.

Recreational anglers won’t be allowed to retain chinook as the endangered stocks swim through Johnstone Strait, the Strait of Georgia and the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Limited retention will apply once those stocks have passed; retention dates vary by region.

Through July and August, all chinook caught on the south coast longer than 80 centimetres must be released to preserve larger female fish, which is expected to enhance spawning productivity.

Recreational fisheries in the Fraser River will be closed for salmon fishing until Nov. 1.

Commercial troll fisheries for chinook will remain closed until Aug. 1 on the south coast, the same date as last year. In the north, the chinook fishery will open Aug. 15, five days earlier than last summer.

On the restoration side, Fisheries and Oceans has allocated $76 million from the B.C. Salmon Restoration and Innovation fund since the five-year $142-million investment was announced one year ago.